BT's Shutting Down Dial-Up

Wait, people still use dial-up? Apparently so, and it costs more to use dial-up than it does to just pay for broadband. Either way, BT's pulling the plug on the 1st of September, so it's either get update or go dark.

Apparently there are "thousands" of people across Britain still using dial-up, with the majority in rural areas. According to stats put together by the Country Land and Business Association there's an estimated 15-20 per cent of country-dwellers who don't have access to broadband and have to rely on either dial-up or mobile internet.

I really don't understand why, in this day and age, every place doesn't have some sort of broadband, even if it's not particularly fast. I mean, even 2Mbit broadband is a whole quantum leap over 56k. How unbelievably tedious that would be these days. PlusNet apparently still maintains a "narrowband" service, so there's hope for technological luddites for a little while yet.